Page 18 - Environmental_Circular Economy

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Chapter 3 - Cascading use of biomass

3.1 Definition of cascading

The concept of cascading has been described under a wide varity of appoaches and perspectives, leading
a quantity of definitions. Although, in a report prepared by WWF and Mondi in 2016, an analyse of these
different definition is done, intending to highlight the common elements and propose a series of criteria on
which to base a comprehensive concept of cascading use (awsassets.panda.org, s.f.):

“1. The concept should be applicable to all biomass sources, whether they are from forestry, agriculture,
marine environments, or different waste streams or byproducts.
2. The concept should focus on the multiple sequential material use of biomass.
3. Cascading should aim at maximising the value of products in order to achieve the highest resource
efficiency.
4. The concept should be in line with existing European waste legislation, and the (future) European
strategy on the Circular Economy.
5. The concept should not consider direct energy use of virgin biomass as a cascading use, because energy
use implies the automatic end of any life cycle and the leakage of the resource from the system. If the first
use of biomass is energy, a cascade cannot start.
6. The concept should be applicable at the product level (e.g. the life cycle of a product) as well as at the
sector level (including the allocation of a specific resource to different products).
7. Cascading should be quantifiable in order to measure its contribution to resource efficiency of the
cascaded resource and to compare the results of different policy actions.”

Also, from those criteria, they propose to use the difinition published by Carus et al. 2014 and Essel &
Carus 2014, as it is the only one that cover all the above mentioned elements. According to this definition,
“Cascading use of biomass takes place when biomass is processed into a biobased final product and this
final product is utilised at least once more either for material use or energy.”

For a better understanding, it might be interesting to add the definition of 2 key concepts linked
to cascading:

- Biomass is used to define an organic material, made from plants and animals. It is also a fuel developed
from organic material (for example wood, crops or garbage), thus a sustainable and renewable source of
energy.

- Bio based product refers to products wholly or partly derived from biomass

The cascading use of biomass can be applied at single- or multi- stage. The single-stage cascading is
achieved when a bio-based product is developed, and then directly used for energy. In the case of
multi-stage application of cascading, the bio-based product is processed at least one more time into a new
final bio-based product before being used for energy.